Let's Build a Future Without Cars - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/04/20/lets-build-a-future-without-cars/ <comment><USER2> Let's built a future with 300mph self-driving supercars and mach 20 spaceplanes -- addressing the actual desires and wants of most users (mobility, convenience) rather than imposing personal ethics of asceticism (mass transit, anti-urbanization). The author brings up a lot of valid problems with contemporary car travel (and notably none of its revolutionary advantages), but most of these orthogonal to the personal-vs.-mass transport issue he argues, e.g.

* Health dangers from emissions -- an issue of (certain implementations of) internal combustion, not the form factor of the vehicle: personal auto vs. bus or train

* Health dangers/obnoxiousness of long commutes -- likewise, a complicated thing which doesn't immediately suggest "ban cars" as the obvious solution. (If anything -- everything else being the same -- self-driving supercars should result in the shortest commutes: point-to-point (last mile), no waiting, no traffic congestion (from AI)

* Infrastructure NIMBY (roads, sprawling parking lots): rail lines have the same issues, with the tradeoff that the sparser your mass transit ugliness is, the more excruciating inconvenience the last-mile segment of a commute is (try living 10m walk from a subway stop). Flying "cars" are almost certainly _infinitely_ worse, because of their extreme noise

None of these are arguments against private transport; they are arguments against specific _implementations_ of private transport, and don't at all imply the conclusions the author derives.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I came in here to comment of this. Let's cure the ills of a device that is massively useful. Sure - cities should look more like NYC and less like Houston - I'll give the car haters that, but I'm with uvdiv, that I'd far prefer fast, clean versions that drove themselves.

The great part of high-speed rail, etc. is that you can relax while they do the driving and you arrive close to your destination. However, driverless cars give you the best of both of those worlds, and other than wind-resistance (which drafting largely solves) you have similar efficiency.

PS - Does anyone find "driverless car" to be the 21st century equivalent of "horseless carriage"?

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm the one crazy luddite on HN (would not surprise me at all!), but I don't look forward to self-driving 300mph cars. The idea of trusting a computer system to keep me safe on open roads, in close proximity to other computer-controlled cars, sounds terrifying, not relaxing.

Yes, I love high-speed trains, because they're on a track, and while this obviously does not guarantee safety, it certainly makes it _feel_ much safer to me.

Compare to air travel. Even with the meticulous maintenance and regulatory requirements, a significant fraction of the population is scared of flying (to some degree). Driverless cars are better in one aspect (operates at ground level), worse in others (proximity to other vehicles), just different in some ways (computer versus human pilot), and complete unknowns, so far, in others (regulation).

Even if the actual crash/injury/fatality rate of driverless cars is nil, how do you design a 300mph computer-controlled car to not be scary for passengers? I _want_ it to work, as I recognize the advantages, but it seems like the social problems will be even tougher than the technical problems, and I'm definitely not going to be an early adopter.

<comment><USER5> Must be perspective. I, for instance, think we should all be terrified to share the road with scores, hundreds, or even thousands of multi-ton mechanical devices traveling anywhere from 25 to 70 mph which are operated by people, easily-distracted, endlessly fallible, and often foolishly reckless people. Computer-controlled sounds better/safer to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To me, what would be interesting about a world without cars (or even with cars, but vastly more attractive public transport) is that it would partly reverse a sad isolationist trend that's come along with the power and control given to us by modern technology.

I used to catch a bus every day through the city, and there were a lot of strange people on those trips. Gangs of 9 year old gangster kids drunk up the back. Little old ladies muttering racist slurs at asian students. A guy who hadn't showered in so long his clothes had gone partially transparent from the grease. I don't think I was ever in any danger, but it sure was uncomfortable sometimes. I work pretty close to home now (in fact, mostly at home), so it's not really an issue anymore. But strangely, I find myself missing that chance to interact with people who I didn't choose to interact with.

It seems like every time we get more power (like by inventing an engine that can move us around) we use it to get more control (now I can encase myself in a metal shield that prevents any accidental congress with the outside world).

A bunch of technology has gone the same way. Efficient worldwide shipping and postage means you don't need to go outside to shop. Communication moving online means you can block people you don't like rather than have to deal with them. OKCupid means you can pre-screen your dates to avoid accidentally meeting someone unpalatable. You can GPS track your kids so they won't ever end up lost or at the wrong sort of party.

And those are all good things that give you more control over your environment. But they also isolate you. Unknown experiences are fundamentally scary; so scary that we feel more afraid of walking in a dark alley than we do of heart disease. Like every generation before us, we strike out against danger with the power of our tools. But our dangers are, at this point, largely invented. We're getting to a point where instead of being safe, we'll just be cocooned in a real-world filter bubble, where we never have to fear the unknown, uncontrollable, unsanitised real world that gets forced on us when we get on a bus or walk around a city. I suspect, for all our newfound safety, we'll just feel a bit unsatisfied.

I guess I've just argued myself out of believing that the future without cars is ever really going to happen. Maybe there'll be a virtual bus MMO.

<comment><USER7> You've done a great job of summing up one of the reasons that public transit in the US is as bad as it is.

My goal is to safely get from Point A to Point B, and I don't want to spend a lot of time waiting around at Point A, or sitting and waiting on the way to Point B.

We have three goals here, in order of importance. Let's call them safety, convenience, and speed.

Taking a bus with a bunch of drunken hooligans doesn't help much with that first, and most important, goal. I want my transportation to be safe, and the high crime rates on public transportation in the US speak for themselves.

Interesting experiences are great. Getting mugged isn't, and while I'm not a prime target (muggers don't usually pick on two-hundred-pound guys that spend a lot of time in the gym), five loud, drunk people in a gang is not the sort of situation I want to be around regularly.

Especially if I'm carrying a $1500 laptop and a $600 smartphone.

Convenience, at least here in SF, is also pretty miserable. I have not once had a bus arrive on-time. The trains are usually on-schedule, but conveniently frequent only during peak hours, and they only cover a small portion of the greater Bay Area. Don't even get me started on CalTrain.

If I want to meet somebody and I need to take a bus, I need to add an extra half-hour window around my journey. If you assume a normal tech-person salary, that lost half-hour makes it cheaper to take a taxi for most journeys.

Speed is good for trains; busses, on the other hand, live at the whim of traffic.

Japan gets all of these right in its major cities. I have never once felt threatened on a train, and delays are few and far between.

The tradeoff they make is in manpower -- station employees are everywhere. We tend to not like hiring lots of people in the US, and so public transit stations might have one or two visible employees, and certainly not visible, uniformed personnel at every platform.

This is why cars are as popular as they are. In SF, if I want to go from Pacific Heights to the Inner Sunset, a journey by bus-and-train pushes about an hour. By car, it's about fifteen minutes.

In my car, I have a stereo, air conditioning, and a clean, comfortable seat. Public transit, on the other hand, is pretty filthy here in SF, and for some odd reason they jack the heat up enough so that I need to do a little striptease whenever I get on a train.

All minor inconveniences, sure, but it adds up quickly, and what do I get in return? I'm late, have lost money in the long run, and arrive more often than not in a worse mood than when I started.

I really want working public transit here in the US, but the way things are going, I don't see that happening for at least another decade.

<comment><USER5> You have many of the same observations as me, but form a different conclusion. Although, one thing: you say, "My goal is to safely get from Point A to Point B..." Cars are a great way to kill 30 or 40 thousand people a year. Not very safe. And the quality of service (and riders) will surely improve on public transportation as more people use it, don't you think? Japan seems to prove that.

<comment><USER8> The quality of service will never reach the level of Japan. Transit operators have it easy there because people don't vandalize and they don't litter. This means that your maintenance costs are very low and it's more economical to buy high quality, comfortable seating.

As well, transit is only good for getting you around in the cities. Once you get out to "inaka", a car is all but a requirement, much like in North America.

This "world without cars" is a nice pipe dream, but the reality is that no matter how good your transit system, it's still a huge time sink to use it. The only time it becomes faster than a car is if you live in a dense city with poor traffic flow, and that accounts for a tiny percentage of the world population. That's also why it's only the pampered urbanites who dream of a carless world.

<comment><USER9> > _if you live in a dense city with poor traffic flow, and that accounts for a > tiny percentage of the world population_

That's false. Most of the world's population now lives in cities. Deciding what percentage of those fall below the threshold of "poor" traffic-flow wise is difficult, but it's not "tiny". (<http://www.gizmag.com/go/7613/>)

Cars beget cars. The reason people need cars in a lot of the US is because they moved somewhere that they need a car to get to. People talk about the amount of time that things take without a car forgetting that said problem was created by cars in the first place. In places where most folks don't have cars you have a small grocery store every few blocks rather than a large one every few miles. The demographics of public transit differ from society at large because the well-off drive cars.

I grew up in American suburbia and have lived in Europe for the last decade. The amount of time required to say, go shopping, or commute to work has remained broadly similar in the half-dozen areas I've lived in, though the distances have not.

Progressively moving away from cars is largely a cultural rather than technological problem. Some well-done urban planning (including structuring energy prices to favor more efficient means) and a few decades to execute it could drastically shift the balance to where we have far _fewer_ cars.

<comment><USER8> The generic "city" is not a very useful term here. How many people are there? There's a big difference between New York and Maza. What is the topography like? Is it sprawling like Phoenix? Or dense like Tokyo? How much density, population, and infrastructure is required to make a convenient and economical transit system? I'd wager far too much to displace cars in any meaningful way except in the largest cities.

Cars are used because they are versatile. Every other form of transport has far more narrow use cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article falls flat on its face in the first two paragraphs when he says that car technology has not advanced in the last 126 years. That just being ignorant of how cars work if he believes that. And to call them a stupid technology is purely idiotic.

I love cars but I wouldn't mind if a better technology came around to replace them. The keyword being better and not just different. People are always going to want a way to independently travel. I live in NYC and while PT is convenient it is still a pain in the ass overall. Getting to places too late or too early because of the train schedule. Being forced to deal with the different weirdos of the city. Delays and breakdowns that happen more often than they should. There is a reason why there is still so much traffic in the city. People, for the most part, who can afford to take Taxis or have their own car still do.

Even if you have Jet packs or any other alternative travel tech that we know about now there are still going to be infrastructure problems. Clearing skyways for the jetpacks, knocking down structures which impede these skyways. And the results of a malfunctioned jetpack would probably lead to a more instant death than the normal car accident.

This paragraph alone "We sacrifice ourselves and our environment to these death traps, health hazards, planet killers, money sucks; these land-grabbers, respiratory rapists, and insidious isolation engines. And for what? The pleasure and convenience of rapid movement? That's a problem we can solve in other ways." makes me not take the article or the author seriously.

I welcome advances in technology that allow us to travel more cleanly and efficiently. But we have to remember that cars serve a number of different purposes for different people. So until we can find one technology that is better & not hodge podge of different tech that replaces the car I wouldn't hold my breath about people willingly giving them up.

-edit misspelled "of"

</comment><comment><USER11> It's always important to consider the dark side. We didn't do much of that when we built car culture in the first place, so let's do it now.

So try:

"Let's build an unaffordable future where the super-rich live in hyper- inflated city real estate and the poor are consigned to unreachable rural pockets of cultural stagnation or to over-crowded ghettoes."

How will we create livable walkable cities where real estate does not hyper inflate?

<comment><USER12> Livable, walkable, affordable cities are dense. That is the primary factor in whether or not you can afford to live within walking/biking/subway distance. The rich people that want to live close to work are going to get first dibs on usable housing, and unless you build more than that, middle class residents don't stand a chance.

So much of that "hyper inflated city real estate" is not especially dense. So you get lots of rich people living in 4-6 floor, beautiful, historic buildings near the center of the city. That type of housing does not lead to livable, walkable cities.

If you want real estate prices to drop, and you want cities to be livable, you have to build an excess of dense housing. Right now it is near impossible to increase population density in the city, due to zoning restrictions, existing tenants, etc.

I don't know a solution to that, but I think it's the root of the problem.

<comment><USER13> Zoning regulations that mix living and work? Like much of Europe. The emphasis on commuting to a work district is a lot of the problem. If workplaces were evenly distributed you could walk to a nearby one.

Or telecommuting of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To get rid of cars, you need cities designed for people, not cars: otherwise everything is so far away that nothing gets ever done. We won't get rid of cars until oil is ridiculously expensive and we must give up. That will also leave much of the recent (since 1950's) development to decay, and new cities will emerge where there are new concentrations of people.

So, we will get a future without cars at some point, it's just not going to be a nice convenient continuum to something else.

<comment><USER15> Or we just migrate to self-driving electric cars, with the batteries serving as Intergrid energy storage.

<comment><USER16> I've learned to never get too attached to anything that comes after "Or we just ..." :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The "let's get rid or substantially reduce cars" crowd often is comprised of those who live in cities, and have no understanding of the indispensability of cars in rural areas. Work, shopping, some level of school, advanced medical, are often in one of the next towns 10-15 miles over, with your town having one of those as an anchor.

And notice I said "one of the next towns over". Stuff isn't necessarily concentrated in an "economic zone" like it is in cities. Work could be 8 miles east, the high school in your town, and the elementary school 10 miles north. Mass transit just wouldn't cut it.

<comment><USER18> This is a really, really good point. I live in a town in the south and like most southern towns public transit is just emerging or non-existent. From my apartment complex on an interstate to downtown where I work is around 17 miles at 60mph. The way roads and interstates are setup it's almost impossible for public transit to be possible. When I travel to SF or Boston its an odd but fun traveling experience. Back home it just doesn't work. I enjoy my Mustang and my commute to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Our country was built on steam trains, which were horrifically inefficient, but they got the job done. Currently we're built on cars, which too are inefficient but practical. These things gained ground because there was a way to commercialise them, to make people say "I can't live without that". The question is: how can that be done with things like ultralights and bullet trains and public air? Could we really let the roads overgrow and just fly or rail everywhere? It's an enticing prospect, but I fear that such a vision of the future neglects the many people who _just can't afford_ to make the switch.

Oh, and the nitpick of the day:

"We are the descendents [sic] of chimps…"

We have a common ancestor with chimpanzees (and bonobos); we're not descended from them.

<comment><USER5> It really is an amazing testament to human ingenuity that something as mind- bogglingly complicated as the modern automobile could have ever become a consumer item. But their cost is profound (DanI-S sums it up here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3872338>). Surely, concern for people who "can't afford" expensive things would lead to adopting more public transportation, don't you think?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love cars. I love driving them, I love working on them, I love the design language and history. They're one of the finest expressions of man's use of engineering to conquer his surroundings and go extremely fast. I'd also love a future where you don't need a car to commute, though.

<comment><USER21> I often wonder why there is such a common city style of dense commercial infrastructure (downtown) surrounded by further and further distant residential infrastructure.

Why don't we construct buildings that have both residential floors and commercial floors, for instance? At least then you'd have more options for living very close to where you work.

<comment><USER22> _Why don't we construct buildings that have both residential floors and commercial floors, for instance? At least then you'd have more options for living very close to where you work._

Houston sort of does this via very relaxed zoning, which allows office buildings and stores to be placed right next to houses and apartments. It works better than you'd expect and it's usually not hard to live close to work, especially since housing is so cheap.

I'm in NYC now, and enjoy not needing a car, but the difference in rent comes to more than a new car every year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Let's build a future where people aren't packed together like sardines twenty- four hours a day. Urban living takes the idea of personal space and crushes it down to a bubble three inches around your head, to the point where people think it's acceptable for your neighbors to hear you through the walls, to spend an hour every day sitting in a metal box with fifty strangers you don't talk to or even acknowledge, to walk by graffiti and not take it as a personal insult to your home city and by extension yourself. If the news that someone you know got mugged doesn't badly shock you, you owe it yourself to move somewhere better.

</comment><comment><USER24> Given a safe, flat road you can't beat a bicycle for energy efficiency and cost:

[http://www.treehugger.com/bikes/whats-the-worlds-most- energy...](http://www.treehugger.com/bikes/whats-the-worlds-most-energy- efficient-vehicle-a-bicycle.html)

<comment><USER16> If those are your measures.

But a car can very easily beat a bicycle on time efficiency, assuming you're going more than half a mile.

A car can also beat a bicycle on opportunity exposure.

Both statements are illustrated by mine and many others' commutes. I drive 40 minutes each way, because I couldn't find a job here, but I could find a job there. I'd love to have found a job here, but at the moment my job is there. The job there would have been unthinkable without a car. Yes, I could ride the bus - train - bus, but it would take hours. For me, a bicycle would never get me there.

One of the many things that's holding back a national economic recovery is that some people can find jobs but can't sell their house to move to the new job. There's not enough movement and flexibility.

In my metro area, I have the opportunity to take any job that I can find, from ten to sixty minutes car radius. That means I eat. That comes from flexibility.

<comment><USER25> Hmm, you spend 40 minutes driving. How much time do you spend in the gym? What if you rode a bicycle for 1.5 hours and skipped both the driving and the gym?

The problem with a car in your situation is contextual. You are supposed to spend that 40 minutes of driving concentrating on driving. Not talking on cell phones, not texting, not talking, not even listening to music but DRIVING. The context of where you are driving "probably" changes too, highway vs. city but I'm guessing that sometimes switching your driving patterns lags a bit after you get off that highway offramp.

On a bicycle or public transportation, the context is completely different.

At the very least on a bicycle you are exercising (we can get into the difficulties later of urban riding). But there are other things, how great you feel, the fantastic views, the feelings of elation, the feelings of extreme accomplishments before the day even starts.

On public transportation you can read, operate your computer, talk to your commute neighbor or get other things done.

FWIW, I draw a 20 mile radius around my house and only look for jobs in that circle. I can figure out how to bike 40 miles a day.

<comment><USER26> If more work places had showers, that might be a workable solution.

Also: "I drive 40 minutes _each way_ " 1hr20min of driving is not going to translate into 1hr30min of biking, with the only possible exception being if you spent the entire car ride in gridlock or parking lots.

And: "I couldn't find a job here, but I could find a job there". That you can find a job within 20 miles does not help him.

 _"You are supposed to spend that 40 minutes of driving concentrating on driving. Not talking on cell phones, not texting, not talking, not even listening to music but DRIVING."_

Yeah, and I'm not supposed to eat pizza or drink so much...

<comment><USER27> People who don't cycle much often think showers are necessary.

In reality once you get fit you don't sweat much (I get far sweatier on the tube than cycling), and if you're overheating you can always slow down slightly.

* Shower before leaving then you get rid of the dirt + bacteria that makes the sweat smell.

* Wear clean lycra - this wicks sweat away before it has a chance to start smelling.

In London my cycling commute of 1hr would take over 2hrs by car, and 1hr15min by train. Cycling is often the quickest way. You also combine exercise and commuting time which leads to a significant overall time saving. I don't feel the need to do a lot of other exercise after cycling 200 miles a week.

<comment><USER26> I bike regularly and trust me, these sorts of things vary a good deal between people. In my overly warm 70F office I feel like I need a shower halfway through the day anyway. There is no way in hell I'd bike for an hour or more before that. 45 minutes is my cutoff.

And major cities are major outliers in cycle commuting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Cars address a lot of needs. It's not surprising that there are superior solutions for each of those needs, but all of those solutions are significantly worse than cars for other needs. If you try to cobble together a car equivalent from those other solutions, you end up with something signficantly more expensive/less good.

</comment><comment><USER29> The Accountant's Falacy: Anything for which the debit doesn't appear on _your_ balance sheet is "free".

Follow busses in traffic for a while, and add up the total fuel, time wasted, etc. in _all_ the traffic impeded by the less then 1/2 full (on average) bus. There is no branch of mathematics that could be used to argue that busses save the civilization money.

Consider if everyone was not disallowed by law(1) from carpooling for compensation. Roughly doubles the aggregate person-mile per hour bandwidth of the _existing_ traffic system...

Bus driver unions and taxi owner associations are the net gainers of the lobbyist-written laws impeding transportation innovation; everyone else loses.

1) you can carpool all you want informally. You cannot set up publicly accessible systems which compete with taxis.

<comment><USER30> Whose vehicle wastes the fuel in the situation you described? That of the, usually one, individual who chose to incur much higher marginal costs by taking the car instead of the bus in the first place. Just like you cant't blame a cyclist for the fuel wasted by the people in cars waiting to overtake him on their 2km trip...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This article's view is a visionary one, and I applaud that: But people promote (bullet) trains, subways, etc. as revolutionary inventions when they really aren't. They've been around for 50+ years and have 'lost' to cars in the marketshare battle, in Europe, US, China, etc. I want us to focus on new technologies like the instead of continuing to push old ones like it's a 'sprawl conspiracy' keeping them down (when their use is optimized for downtowns). As uvdiv mentions, the personal vs. mass transit issue is big spectrum.

Things like the mag-lev pod transport system, flyways, etc. are awesome. We should develop all of them and try to make them the best we can. But it's a gigantic mistake to discount the car - we have something to learn from their success: People like freedom, people like privacy, not everyone wants to live in a dense city.

That's why I say better/self driving cars are the practical solution to the future, but we could easily see something else revolutionize the situation by 2060. And as for over-crowded roads, The current road network is way more than sufficient to handle traffic with self-driving cars: You can put 5-10x the number of cars on a highway and not jam it if computers are driving. Jetpacks, after all, will have the collision problem too.

</comment><comment><USER32> >> "Big, gaping garages"? "WalMarts, Targets, and mega-malls don't even bother catering for the pedestrian shopper"

The problem is not the car, its city planning.

Don't make the roads wider and wider, build good and fast bike paths.

Have the train station in the city center where all the shops and malls are.

Build supermarkets and workplaces close to where people live. Suburbs far away from everything are bad in many ways.

There are many more things that could be improved, if city plaing wasn't run by the car lobby.

</comment><comment><USER33> This article, while well written and trying to think ahead, forgets something very important: cars are such a symbol because they appeal to one of the core aspects of human nature. The freedom of movement, the ability to choose where you go, the notion of being unrestricted and able to move about freely. Being herded on a bus is not in our nature.

Furthermore, to some degree, cars are actually more efficient from a personal perspective as an individual. If you live in the typical USA sprawl, you don't really want to take a bus somewhere. For example, one of my co-founders had to take the bus home from his office yesterday. The commute is normal about 20 minutes in traffic...the bus took almost two hours.

The issue facing the US is that our space utilization is far less compact in most places, which makes public transport highly inefficient. I'm all for more railroads and other means of getting people around, but the only cities with truly effective public transport are:

\- NYC area

\- Chicago

\- Pittsburgh

...I'm trying to think of others, but I'm drawing a blank. Also, bear in mind I'm distinguishing between places that _have_ transport vs. where it is _effective_.

As for flying cars and all those goodies, they won't happen. The reason is quite simple: if something fails, they fall and you die. The average joe is not able to properly handle a flying craft with that level of risk - and if it falls, it may land _on_ someone.

The most promising advance so far is driverless cars. I do believe they will become commonplace soon as technology advances and they become able to handle regular driving. I personally wouldn't use them, but they would make the rest of the driving public much happier and I do expect that to be the next car revolution.

Sadly, in the US at least, public transport and flying cars are not in our future.

<comment><USER34> Solid points. To add to your safety point regarding flying cars: as bad as people are at driving in 2 dimensions, I can't imagine how horrible we would be driving in 3.

<comment><USER35> Flying cars must happen eventually, but only long after driverless cars have become the norm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "So let's build more bullet trains..."

Can we just build two in the US? One in California and one in the North East where there's a clear need? We don't have any bullet trains in the US. It's starting to get embarrassing that we can't get our act together. Maybe we can get ours in red, like in Italy? :-)

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57417703-1/italy-to- laun...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57417703-1/italy-to-launch- ferrari-style-high-speed-train/)

<comment><USER37> Texas would be a good choice too, possibly better than California due to the lack of mountain ranges, and shorter distances between the major cities. I think the only reason SF-LA is being talked about more seriously than Houston- Austin-Dallas is the relative political climate in the two states. But even given that, there was a serious initiative to build a line in Texas in the late 1980s/early 1990s, killed in part by Southwest Airlines' aggressive lobbying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I applaud the direction, but I do have one small nit to pick:

"there really hasn't been much advance in car technology in the intervening 126 years"

You can drive all day every day for fifty years [1] and never use the biggest feature we've been researching for cars, but that doesn't mean it's any less of a breakthrough.

"Between 1970 and 2010, the number of fatalities decreased by 38% and the number of injury crashes by 13%. In the same period, the number of vehicles and the distance travelled more than doubled."

Many of those gains are due to the parade of safety technologies over the last several decades. Electronic stability control, airbags, crumple zones. If we go all the way back to Benz, then we should talk about seatbelts and shatter proof glass too.

Cars haven't exactly been stagnant, we've just had a subtler priority. Those safety advances will lay an important foundation, and hopefully be extended as we shoot for a "crash proof" personal flying vehicle.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2012/01/30/146075552/ups-driver- honored-f...](http://www.npr.org/2012/01/30/146075552/ups-driver-honored-for- accident-free-career)

[2] [http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/irtadpublic/pdf/1...](http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/irtadpublic/pdf/11IrtadReport.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER39> As much as I respect Peter Theil I think this whole 'where are the flying cars' thing is a dead end.

Its essentially a futuristic projection of the 1950's, a time when no-one had any idea things like the internet would exist.

Imagining a society around transportation needs is redundant. Commuting is rooted in an era where cities grew around industrial activity that made the environment unpleasant (as opposed to the country / suburbs) hence the desire to travel between the two.

Vehicle emissions aside this isn't so true anymore.

Communications technology changes the way we think about distance, its much less necessary for most workers to group in the same space.

I think the future is about local communities / neighborhoods, remote working via the internet (from home or from mixed co-working spaces), and better public transport between districts and nodes such as airports.

The internet is going to continue to radically transform our society in ways we can barely imagine - and I don't really see why flying cars need to be part of that future (although recreational jetpacks would be fun:) )

</comment><comment><USER40> There's a big reason I don't want to move to bay area to work. I love to live in Berlin just because I can get anywhere with a train anytime I want. And the funny thing is, in Berlin it is allowed to drink beer in the trains and subways and still I don't feel afraid at all, people behave. Trains work, are fast, safe and reliable most of the time.

When I visited in Berkeley I was horrified how bad the public transportation was in there. BART trains were most of the time fully packed, had only a few trains in an hour and traveling from the stations to home was slow and annoying. The bus transportation was horror. Most of the time they were late or not arriving at all.

I may have an European mindset, but living in the USA is just out of the question. Manhattan would be better, but then again paying above 1000 dollars per month from your apartment is kind of silly.

</comment><comment><USER41> Flying "cars" are far from real, The Martin Jetpack which the author has mentioned is noisy, expensive and only has 30 minutes (31.5 miles max) operating time. However, there's much room to improve current transportation system, new technology and government regulations are constantly pushing fuel efficiency. Mass production air-based vehicles aren't viable unless energy production becomes cheap enough.

The next viable transportation system may be vacuum maglev train. The world already have Superconducting and normal conducting Maglev technology (JRC and Transrapid respectively) and mankind have built countless tunnels and bridges and concrete structures.

<comment><USER16> In the world and people that I currently see in front of me, any mode of transportation that requires a helmet is not viable for _most_ people, whether that be bicycles, motorcycles or jetpacks.

However, I also think people are more flexible than I give them credit for. I see a lot of bicycles parked outside bars, and probably a fair number of those are DUI "graduates." I think I see some of those people riding to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The article claims "Silicon Valley, with all its wealth, intellectual resources, creative thinkers, and alleged determination to change the world for the better, has to lead the charge on all these fronts".

So far, most of the innovations in transport, be it high speed railroads, autobahns or moon missions, have all been done by government. That's simply because it's very hard to build a viable commercial model around infrastructure projects, especially if you expect to see a return within 50 years. If someone does find a way that would be great, of course, and in that case there's a good chance this person would from Silicon Valley.

</comment><comment><USER43> > So let's build more bullet trains

The Earth's axial supercontent, Eurasia, is ideally suited to train transport. China has ambitious and innovative plans to build a Eurasian rail network capable of transporting people from Beijing to London in two days:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7397846...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7397846/Kings- Cross-to-Beijing-in-two-days-on-new-high-speed-rail-network.html)

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't mind the cars. I just want them to drive themselves.

<comment><USER45> Its called a taxi!

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> What we need are electricity powered flying cars. Then we can have green, walk-able cities and can use all that open space above us for transportation. We'll need some new kind of flying technology though, cos nobody wants to hear the loud noise of wind blades or deal with all the air pushing downwards. Perhaps hover "paths" where grass is below and not tarmac?

<comment><USER45> Flying buses would be much better than flying cars. Make a type of aeroplane that can do short flights (<20 miles between towns). Use capacitors that can be recharged between flights, and have an idling conventional engine in case of emergency. Even at relatively low speeds this could dramatically improve commute times.

<comment><USER47> Electric air taxis would be great for commuters. You would have to streamline check-in and security though. People will ditch their cars for a faster trip time.

Consider this scenario for a 20 mile commute: 1) Bike or walk one mile to local air strip ( a converted road) 2) 18 mile electric flight to destination town. 3) Bike or walk one mile to office from landing strip.

Takeoff and landing must be silent and fast. See <http://electrictakeoff.com> for an example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> One insurmountable problem I see with advancing mass transport is that people simply aren't willing to spend as much on public transport than they are cars because they believe they have an equity investment in the car. Most people I know get upset spending any more $75-100/mo on a monthly transit pass, but are willing to pay $400/mo on car expenses since they "own" the car. As a result, I don't think really good systems will ever emerge except for where there is massive subsidization, and even those cases suck. For instance a few years ago when I looked San Francisco MTA had a budget of $750MM but only sold $110MM in tickets. The only bright spot I see are company run shuttles.

The other problem I see is that most people appear to be irrationally scared of cycling in cities/urban areas, even though most city cycling occurs at really slow speeds. I have been a cyclist in San Francisco for five years with only a few minor incidents. Whenever I talk to people who aren't cyclists about commuting in the city, they often respond as if I have an impending death clock over my head.

For people who think cycling is a major health boon: it really isn't unless you're commuting >5mi/each way or doing a lot of climbs. It's not that hard most of the time. I get way more out of a 30-40minute/run or squats in the gym.

<comment><USER49> I wish I could pay $400/mo for access to a transit system with five times the operating budget of the $80/mo one I currently experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Problem 1: This article is a giant anti-car rant with a few points of rational debate baked in that might help public policy. It's no more objectively helpful than reading a spiel from BimmerForums or ClubWRX on why they love their 300hp sports cars and would never give them up to be herded in a big, crowded, smelly bus.

Problem 2: Cars are currently the best solution to the problems we have. That's why they are #1 in the US. Not because they are horrible inventions, not because there is some conspiracy to keep them in their cars (Americans CHOOSE to live in suburbs with large lawns and lots of open space, since not everyone lives in a big city with subway systems and whatnot). Building lots of parking lots is still cheaper than figuring a way to shuttle people around in rural areas. America is big, land is cheap.

America doesn't look like Manhattan, NYC everywhere. For these people, cars are the best solution. And the next stage is not going to be a jetpack. It's going to be a self-driving car. The fact that average people put up with all the problems and headaches of cars that only car enthusiasts love (maintenance, repairs, buying, etc.) shows us that there are a LOT of advantages from cars that we need to match with new forms of technology. My take is: Improve cars, rather than trying to destroy them. Because 100 years of innovation of automobiles aren't for nothing.

My take: The near future is efficient hybrids (2025), electric or fuel-cell cars (2035), then self-driving cars (2060). People will continue to talk about completely changing the infrastructure of the US, having everyone take buses and subways to work, but cars will continue to be over 75% of commute options for the forseeable future. Why?

The problem with all public transport technologies right now is it doesn't solve the density problem. The majority of new population in the US is growing not in really dense cities, but in medium dense suburbs. Everyone talks about moving people into "livable, healthy, walkable cities", yet Americans largely choose to migrate out of those ciites into new suburbs. I wonder why. Maybe they don't like the crowds, the crime, etc. It's human nature.

Problem 3: Finally, here are some things that cars have solved that are unresolved problems in other forms of transport:

Freedom of movement. Go wherever you want, whenever you want, with no one telling you what to do.

Speed. Choose a random American's home and a random American's office. Driving by car, even in traffic, probably beats all other modes in terms of speed. That's why even in the Bay Area at most 20% of commuters go by public transport where over 70% drive.

Efficiency. Cars are actually quite efficient and getting more so, especially with hybrid technology. The average car beats the average city bus in terms of energy efficiency. And we are quite likely to get 50+MPG Cars and electric cars in the near future.

<http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html>

Price. Compared to jet packs or flying cars...

<comment><USER4> > Cars are currently the best solution to the problems we have. That's why > they are #1 in the US.

Granted -- so long as you take the legislative and tax situation into account. That's part of the "problem" to which cars are currently the best solution for most people, but it's not unchangeable.

Or from a different perspective, you could say: the "problem" is that people want to live in places (like suburbs) to which there is no great transportation solution yet, so part of the "solution" has to include a tax system that hides the true cost of the most acceptable solution.

Would cars still be so appealing if the true costs were not hidden? People seem to complain a lot about $4+/gal gasoline, but the tax on it doesn't come close to covering the maintenance needs of the roads they drive on. Couldn't almost any technology be the "best", given the right financial incentive?

I agree that for the next 10 years, hybrid electric cars are the solid bet. They have the ear of the lawmakers, it seems, and so not only are they 'cool', but they've got massive tax incentives helping them. I'm completely in favor of more efficient cars, of course, but it does seem odd to offer so many benefits based not on efficiency, but on one particular technology used to achieve efficiency.

<comment><USER50> Gas taxes (and vehicle registration fees) can completely cover the cost of road construction and maintenance -- several states work this way. A number of US states have constitutional and legal requirements such that this is the only way they can fund their transportation departments. That some states spend many times as much per road mile (I am looking at you California) is a reflection of their inefficiency and politics, not necessity.

I am a strong proponent of the model where all roads and road maintenance should be paid for by gas and use taxes. It works well in states where this is a reality and a couple of studies have shown that they tend to produce better quality roads in addition to being more cost efficient than states where roads are funded out of the general budget.

The lack of a politically guaranteed budget forces a measure of long-term fiscal conservativeness and cost control on the government organizations that maintain the roads. There is a concept of long-term ROI; if doing a better, somewhat more expensive job today significantly reduces costs a few years down the road, it is worth it because it is effectively like increasing the DoT's budget via investment in future years.If they waste money, they can't go back to the taxpayers and ask for more. It provides a bit of negative feedback to the government decision process that is often sorely needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> A friend of mine retold an observation he had read: If an alien species were to observe our planet from on high for awhile, they may come away with the idea that the automobile is the highest life form on the planet we call Earth...

<comment><USER5> An alien observer might also note that as soon as we discovered what we could do with oil, we busied ourselves with using it up as fast as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I watched a documentary about Jacque Fresco where he shows some of his futuristic cities where this is implemented. Very interesting stuff with trains. Maybe a world without car will make the segways more popular.

</comment><comment><USER53> Automated hover taxis would be nice. And Evacuated Tube Transport to replace trains and planes.

</comment><comment><USER54> Cars are one of the worst inventions by human kind. Aside from the points mentioned in the article there is also many deaths by cars (traffic accidents) and the huge amount of cars now days tend to saturate the roads and make mobilization a really slow process.

My solution would be to get rid of cars all together an use only electrical trains driven by few professionals who are less likely to cause accidents; with fixed schedules (and speed) time management would be easier for everyone. And for short distances encourage the use of bicycles (witch also helps to the obesity issues)

<comment><USER55> Before cars became commonplace, we used horses to help transport goods and people inside cities. Horses dump manure. A lot of it. Quoting from [http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past- th...](http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past-the-great- horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/) :

"A horse will on average produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day. Consequently, the streets of nineteenth-century cities were covered by horse manure. This in turn attracted huge numbers of flies, and the dried and ground-up manure was blown everywhere. In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day, which all had to be swept up and disposed of." ... "Of course, urban civilization was not buried in manure. The great crisis vanished when millions of horses were replaced by motor vehicles. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> How about those jet packs that we have been promised for so long.

</comment><comment><USER57> How about flying carpets (Neil Gershenfeld at MIT is working on making one)

</comment><comment><USER58> should cars have rights? to defend them self against this anti-car propaganda.</comment>


Pentagon has a laser that can identify people at a distance by their heartbeat - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613891/the-pentagon-has-a-laser-that-can-identify-people-from-a-distanceby-their-heartbeat/ <comment><USER2> I saw a demonstration of this technology a few years back, at a European military-industrial contractor for which I worked.

It was being pitched as the ideal way to assassinate people in a crowd - identify them by heartbeat signature, fly a drone in to drop a small explosive package on their heads.

When I later saw that biometric information was being harvested by the same company at airports around the world, I figured - time to get a different job. So I quit.

And now, the tech of individually-targeted assassinations is coming to market.

<comment><USER3> > It was being pitched as the ideal way to assassinate people in a crowd - > identify them by heartbeat signature, fly a drone in to drop a small > explosive package on their heads.

Hmm, if you're already shining a laser on your target it seems to me there are simpler ways to achieve your goal...

<comment><USER4> High power lasers aren't easy at all to create and point. A bomb or gun is much easier.

<comment><USER5> I think OP was alluding to a rifle with a laser sight

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > He claims that Jetson can achieve over 95% accuracy under good conditions

Isn't it critical to state how many signatures are in the database when quoting an accuracy? 95% accuracy among 4 different heartbeats is much easier than 95% accuracy among 2^32 heartbeats, many of which will resemble one another.

<comment><USER7> Could be that it's configured with a single signature, and it can determine a match with 95 % accuracy

<comment><USER8> if I run eonugh t-tests thats better than an ANOVA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gait plus heartbeat plus... It doesn't take much make a unique identification:

[https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/96321](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/96321)

<comment><USER10> Daisy chain enough non-unique ID's together and you get something that's close enough to unique for the purposes of the people who will be implementing this.

While the guy who's getting droned or the dude getting the shit kicked out of him by a bunch of cops may care about identification, the people doing those things don't really care as long as they get the right guy often enough compared to the wrong guy.

<comment><USER11> > the people doing those things don't really care as long as they get the > right guy often enough compared to the wrong guy.

I'm not sure that's always accurate. The infamous "We don't do body counts" episode comes to mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why do they even need a laser? You can use a simple webcam to get an HR reading from the face. Here's an article from half a decade ago: [https://www.geek.com/apps/measure-your-heart-rate-using-a- we...](https://www.geek.com/apps/measure-your-heart-rate-using-a-webcam-and- your-forehead-1552180/)

<comment><USER13> Faces can be obscured or disguised. Gaits can be adjusted. Heartbeats...maybe caffeine pills could be used to avoid identification?

<comment><USER14> I wonder if you can hack your pacemaker to fool this technique.

Then of course the next question is: I wonder if you can hack someone else's pacemaker.

<comment><USER15> Yes. Numerous hacks have been shown over the last decade and if you're a tinfoil hat aficionado, then some people believe it's why Barnby Jack was murdered before presenting at Defcon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sure this is a neat toy, but where are they going to get data on _everyone's_ heart signatures to make this practical. That's not going to be eas...

Looks at Apple watch.. looks at fitbit.. looks at Samsung phone with heartbeat monitor..

huh

</comment><comment><USER17> If the scanning system has a database of your regular pulmonary patterns, can't this be used, albeit crudely, to detect the emotional state of a subject?

With automation I can't help but think that this is unfortunately going to bring George Orwell's dystopian vision closer to reality.

<comment><USER18> Considering that polygraphs are mostly a sham, I'd say no, these couldn't be used to detect emotional state.

<comment><USER19> Polygraphs supposedly detect intentional lies. That seems much harder than just trying to get a general sense of "are they relaxed or anxious", "are they happy or sad."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While the article and the other comments are about military uses this could also be used for physical access security instead of finger or iris (or badge.) The next question would be if there is a way to spoof someone else's heartbeat signature. Maybe a flat panel speaker playing a recording of the other person's heartbeat. Good morning Mr. Phelps.....

<comment><USER21> Biometrics makes a terrible authentication system. Sometimes there's not much more than 8 bits of state there. Your garage door opener is more secure.

<comment><USER22> Biometrics has always scared me. The thieves will take your finger for a fingerprint scan, your hand for a hand scan, your head for a retina scan.

<comment><USER23> This requires your heart to actually beat so the pros and cons on both sides are different:

A thief can't steal your heart.

A thief could still threaten your life.

You can't repudiate your heart.

If you get a heart transplant, at first the 'system' might not have a workflow for changing your expected heart signature.

<comment><USER24> Some of them can steal:

      - Jesse James
      - Bonnie and Clyde
      - Arsene Lupin
      - Lupin the third

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b > [facial recognition] needs good, frontal view of the face, which can be hard > to obtain, especially from a drone.

Yeah, well having a drone flying at 200 meters from the target while aiming what must be a heavy laser is not exactly a piece of cake either.

<comment><USER25> Don't military drones fly at extremely high altitudes?

<comment><USER26> Different kind of drone.

In addition to the unmanned bombers that fly at high altitude, the military also has low-altitude surveillance drones like:

[https://www.avinc.com/uas/view/raven](https://www.avinc.com/uas/view/raven)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder what methods exist to alter your heart's distinctive rhythm. Presumably if you had a pacemaker installed, you could tinker with it (albeit at great risk.) But could I alter my heart's signature by taking medication?

<comment><USER28> I think it might be easier and less dangerous to try and fool this particular technology by vibrating your clothing to mask the signal.

<comment><USER29> It probably wouldn't be overly difficult to make simple clothing that renders these lasers useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I see people are pointing out the 95% accuracy. I think it's worth reminding everyone that the current American criteria for killing people with drone strikes requires that they 1) be male and 2) appear from orbit to be above a certain height. There's no requirement to have someone on the ground to pick out targets or make sure afterwards that the right person was killed.

</comment><comment><USER31> may be Pentagon will just use it to remotely monitor the health of the soldiers or soundness of the defensive fortification structures ...

Reminded about remote diagnostics using camera [https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mit- algorithm](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mit-algorithm)

"The algorithm can find subtle changes in motion and amplify those, too. By pointing a camera at an artery, we see the imperceptible beat of a wrist become a pounding great pulsation that's straining to burst out of an arm. The rise and fall of a breathing chest can also be turned up.

MIT computer scientist Fredo Durand predicts that his algorithm will be used primarily for remote medical diagnostics. He also imagines that structural engineers could borrow the tech to measure the way wind makes a building sway or deform slightly."

</comment><comment><USER10> Sure this is cool and could certainly reduce the demand for "signature strikes" (not that we should be droning people as often as we are in the first place) but it sounds like yet another thing we'll be seeing big city police departments using to enhance their dragnet 10yr from now.

<comment><USER32> It won't require a warrant because you were beating your heart in public.

<comment><USER23> I would think there are some aspects of your heart's behavior that are not ordinarily public.

<comment><USER33> You can volunteer with a wearable heart monitor

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> [http://archive.is/obIpd](http://archive.is/obIpd)

</comment><comment><USER35> _Pentagon has a laser that can identify people at a distance by their heartbeat_

Ha! Joke's on them. My ex says I don't have a heart!

Seriously, though. Imagine the medical diagnostic possibilities of something like this. Not this thing exactly, obviously. But something that won't kill people.

</comment><comment><USER36> A Scanner Darkly comes to mine. A suit that's able to game all this surveillance tech: gait masking, face scrambling, heartbeat obfuscation.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wow the new Fitbit sounds very accurate.

</comment><comment><USER38> I looked through all the comments but still haven't seen an answer to an obvious limitation(that is posed near the end of the article): Where are they getting their library of heartbeats from? I'm sure the CIA is collecting, but being able to positively ID someone with their heartbeat is useless unless you already have a verified record of their heartbeat.

Imagine the case of finding an elusive person (such as Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden), somebody has to go collect a verified sample _BEFORE_ an assassination takes place. But if you are in a position to collect a sample of someone's heartbeat and you _KNOW_ that it's the right person through some other verifiable means (you need to know if you actually got OBL instead of a body double), then what does this really get you? You already had some trustworthy source, and you can probably use this previous source to verify that you assassinated the right person.

So this heartbeat ID tech may be more accurate and robust compared to facial recognition, but it's less useful in actuality. We already have verified pictures of most adults in the world via passports and driver's licenses and such, which makes facial recognition a ton more useful in real life.

The problem that this heartbeat tech "solves," the ability to ID someone with great accuracy, is hamstrung by the fact that the elusive people we have the greatest need for an ID like this won't have their data available. For non- elusive people we can already find them by getting their picture and address out of a database.

But you can bet the CIA realizes this limitation and will work diligently over the next few years to get heartprints of Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, and other notorious figures at every public appearance so that they can slowly build a library that will be useful down the road.

</comment><comment><USER39> > This works though typical clothing like a shirt and a jacket (though not > thicker clothing such as a winter coat).

Will wearing a winter jacket (e.g. in airports) still be legal in a couple of years?

</comment><comment> 1-6 Hmm, I wonder if my Apple Watc...

</comment><comment><USER40> Bob Lazar knew about this in 1920

</comment><comment><USER41> Does anyone know where I can find a nice lead breastplate?

<comment><USER42> Then you can bask in the joy of the anonymity of being the guy who walks around with a breastplate.

<comment><USER21> My boys wore chainmail in high school routinely. Everybody got used to it easier than you might imagine.

<comment><USER43> > My boys wore chainmail in high school routinely.

Interesting - mind if I ask why?

<comment><USER21> They made some of it; were very interested in SCA etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Locating interesting parts of an image - <AUTHOR> http://www.iptech-group.com/blog/locating-interesting-parts-of-an-image <comment><USER2> I've written the cropping algorithm being used at Facebook, here is a write-up of the method if you are interested: [http://blog.vjeux.com/2012/facebook/best-cropping- position.h...](http://blog.vjeux.com/2012/facebook/best-cropping- position.html)

I tried to use saliency-based approaches but they don't really work that well for non artistic photos. For example, this image[1] would have edges everywhere but next to the faces.

If you have some time, I would be interested in seeing the results of your approach in my example images[2].

[1] - [https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak- snc6/p206x...](https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak- snc6/p206x206/264737_10151072262945816_1880354054_n.jpg)

[2] - [http://blog.vjeux.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/cropping.ht...](http://blog.vjeux.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/cropping.html)

<comment><USER3> Very interesting approach thanks, unfortunately we don't have the social features ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reddit's thumbnailing script works nice as well, [https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/scrap...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/scraper.py)

edit: I even think you are using a similar method.

<comment><USER3> Yes I'm using a similar method in the first section of the article (information theoretic solution), but I think that reddit is using the entropy of an image instead of the self-information. The self-information yields to better results in our case (empirically). In the latter sections I use different methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would an application of seam carving[1] be useful?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam_carving>

</comment><comment><USER6> From my photography experience which i also apply to graphic design the Rule on thirds and the Golden ratio are the best ways to locate / create interesting parts of an image. This can be achieved by clever cropping too.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Aesthetics>

<comment><USER7> Doesn't this rely on the photographer having framed the photo with that in mind originally? Given a set of arbitrary photos I'm not sure the rule of thirds could be applied in any meaningful way to pick the "interesting bits".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds VERY interesting. I was wondering - is there a python implementation of this algorithm somewhere?</comment>


Guide to Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.nodebeginner.org/

<comment><USER2> Although it isn't my intention, I do understand that this might come across as rude, but how is this different from the last few times it has been posted here on hackernews?

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=nodebeginne...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=nodebeginner.org)

6 months ago, 4 months ago... It may be a good book, but it isn't new, or as far as I know, changed significantly enough to warrant being listed on the front page.

<comment><USER3> As the author of the book: Yep, fully agree. Of course it drives traffic to my site, but even I thought that it has been a bit too often on HN now :-)

Today, Robert Scoble refered to the site, which I think is the reason it got posted here once more.

<comment><USER4> Well, I still appreciate that this article came up again. I'm still new to HN and I wouldn't have gone through the search method to find a beginner's guide to Node.

Thanks again for creating this tutorial. Great introduction to Node and also well written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I started learning node not too long ago, this book was _invaluable_ to me. It's well worth reading twice if not more. I bought it on kindle along with how to node[1] (which was also very well informed, but not as well written).

[1] <http://leanbundle.com/bundles/node>

</comment><comment><USER6> nodebeginner.org was awesome for getting acquainted with node.js. I purchased the book and was a bit disappointed that it didn't add a whole lot more than the tutorial but I was glad to support your efforts. Thanks for making this.

<comment><USER3> I always thought it's quite nice that the whole content is available for free, but I can see that there is room for disappointment even in this scenario :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I appreciate the work that was invested in this book. Thumbs up!

But:

"The aim of this document is to get you started with developing applications for Node.js, ..."

I never develop applications for node.js but instead with node.js. Yes, some people in the community seem to do the first, but serious projects are my goal.

<comment><USER5> that's 99% likely to be a minor phrasing bug rather than indicative of a fundamentally different attitude as you seem to suggest.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. It's fixed with [https://github.com/ManuelKiessling/NodeBeginnerBook/commit/5...](https://github.com/ManuelKiessling/NodeBeginnerBook/commit/59b4df96adb8db62b7d42c36de7c61807f3c5b0d) and the site has been updated.</comment></comment></comment>


NYC Startup Launches First Ever AI-Powered Employee Wellness Platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.myleon.co/ <comment><USER2> Looks like an HR CRUD app.

Where does the AI come into play?

What does the product actually do? Something about playbooks?

If a person thinks giving me an app to sign up for fitness classes is going to stop me from hating my job, they're naive.

But I can't tell what Leon actually does, so maybe it's giving out pay, benefits, and time off.</comment>


Is Chess with Queen Odds a Provable Win? - <AUTHOR> http://arvindn.livejournal.com/129555.html <comment><USER2> The links from the article are fascinating. I had never heard of Arimaa before, and am quite intrigued.

And from the linked article by Kasparov ([http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the- che...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-chess-master- and-the-computer/)) comes this gem:

       In what Rasskin-Gutman explains as Moravec's Paradox, in chess, as in so many
       things, what computers are good at is where humans are weak, and vice versa.
       This gave me an idea for an experiment. What if instead of human versus machine
       we played as partners? My brainchild saw the light of day in a match in 1998
       in León, Spain, and we called it "Advanced Chess." Each player had a PC at hand
       running the chess software of his choice during the game. The idea was to
       create the highest level of chess ever played, a synthesis of the best of man
       and machine.

       ....

       In 2005, the online chess-playing site Playchess.com hosted what it called a
       "freestyle" chess tournament in which anyone could compete in teams with other
       players or computers. Normally, "anti-cheating" algorithms are employed by
       online sites to prevent, or at least discourage, players from cheating with
       computer assistance. (I wonder if these detection algorithms, which employ
       diagnostic analysis of moves and calculate probabilities, are any less
       "intelligent" than the playing programs they detect.)

       Lured by the substantial prize money, several groups of strong grandmasters
       working with several computers at the same time entered the competition. At
       first, the results seemed predictable. The teams of human plus machine
       dominated even the strongest computers. The chess machine Hydra, which is a
       chess-specific supercomputer like Deep Blue, was no match for a strong human
       player using a relatively weak laptop. Human strategic guidance combined with
       the tactical acuity of a computer was overwhelming.

       The surprise came at the conclusion of the event. The winner was revealed to be
       not a grandmaster with a state-of-the-art PC but a pair of amateur American
       chess players using three computers at the same time. Their skill at
       manipulating and "coaching" their computers to look very deeply into positions
        effectively counteracted the superior chess understanding of their grandmaster
       opponents and the greater computational power of other participants. Weak human
       + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more
       remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.

<comment><USER3> Moravec's "Paradox" isn't really paradoxical at all. What makes us say that computers are "strong" in some area? Answer: the fact that they are good there _relative to our prior expectations_. Where do those expectations come from? From looking at ourselves. Similarly: what determines where we say we're "weak"? Answer: seeing other things being strong relative to us. Computers, for instance.

Now, of course there are other points of reference for deciding where we're "weak". Doesn't that invalidate my argument? Why, no, because actually if we use those other points of reference the paradox rather goes away. For instance: Computers do arithmetic very, very fast. Is that an area where we're weak? Only if we compare ourselves against computers; we do arithmetic much better than chickens or tigers do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Indeed, if you start from a closed position where strategy dominates and > tactics are of relatively little use, top human players can still trounce > computers

I haven't been following computer chess as much as I used to be I suspect this is actually untrue. Computer speed has been increasing as always but there has also been massive gains in chess program strength (e.g. compared to old programs when running on the same hardware). For example, Rybka 4 would absolutely crush programs from 10 years ago.

Those combined gains make computer chess programs so strong that I doubt even top players can hold them off even with the position looks quiet. Rybka can defeat GMs even when they have pawn plus first move odds[1]. In one match Rybka had a tiny opening book so the GM had every opportunity to steer the game in a strategic direction.

1\. <[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rybka#Odds_matches_versus_grand...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rybka#Odds_matches_versus_grandmasters>);

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. When I wrote that what I had in mind is puzzle-like positions where strategic planning is required. For example see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(chess)#Defense_perime...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_\(chess\)#Defense_perimeter_.28pawn_fortress.29) (Petrosian vs Hazai).

My real point here is that no chess program incorporates strategy the way humans do, and that it is unfortunate that this goal isn't being pursued.

<comment><USER5> Strategy is just our way of compensating for low clockspeeds.

<comment><USER6> Which is why we will _always_ win some contests, if they don't turn to trying their hand at strategy. Clockspeeds will always be too low for some problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone is serious about proving things about chess I would suggest they start by proving things about simpler chess variants.

The variant of chess "wild 5" where your pawns start on the 7th rank and pieces on the 8th (so pawns promote in one move) has far fewer choices than in chess. It's a simpler game. It has a significant advantage for white, much larger than in normal chess. Humans came somewhat near to proving it's a win for white just by learning the (relatively few) openings out to 20 or so moves. At each step there's usually only a couple moves that aren't terrible. For the first six moves there is a _single_ way of playing which is considered best for both sides.

Yet even in this much simpler game which humans are near cracking, I think a pure math type approach would have a very hard time getting anywhere.

If you can't do anything there, you could always try an even simpler game. There is a game called pawns where you start with only your pawns. If you promote you win instantly. Math ought to be able to solve that one. If you crack that, move on to little chess (normal chess but only with pawns and kings). Little chess should no doubt be a draw (you can waste moves with your king unlike in pawns where it's less clear) but proving that would be a good accomplishment I think.

</comment><comment><USER8> Game researchers don't ignore _all_ Chess-like games that are more difficult for computers. It's just that they've met with very, very limited success in Go. Combined with Go's relative unpopularity outside of southeast Asia, this means you don't hear about it very much.

For example, according to Wikipedia, a computer actually beat a professional Go player for the first time in 2008.

<comment><USER9> Sure, perhaps with a huge handicap or on a 9x9 board. There exists no computer that could ever beat any professional go player in an even 19x19 game, even if you gave the professional as many beers as he could drink.

<comment><USER8> Well, that's what it says on Wikipedia -- though as it happens, the citations are both dead links, so your guess is as good as mine.

edit: Trivial search turned this up: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090514083931.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090514083931.htm)

Wikipedia was apparently talking about a handicap match. Still, it's very telling that 2008 was the first time a computer beat a pro _even in a handicap match_.

<comment><USER10> well, handicaps can be arbitrarily large. so a bot could have beaten a pro with handi even 40 years ago, as long as you make the handi large enough.

recently bots have gotten a lot better at go - they just passed 3dan rank, which is above where most amateurs ever reach. [http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13...](http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1344&start=0)

But they still have a ways to go.

Here is a (fake money) future prediction market on whether a bot will beat a pro in an even game by 2020 - running at 20% right now. <http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=GoCh>

<comment><USER8> In this case, they were fairly reasonable handicaps -- six to eight stones, though certainly large, is not unheard of. You could see that kind of difference between a low-level and a high-level amateur, for example.

<comment><USER9> Sure, it's not unheard of, but it's still huge! It's extremely hard to become six or eight stones better from that level, and by all appearances, it represents an _enormous_ gap in ability. The most talented and smartest humans take years of constant study and practice in their teens and 20s (at the height of their cognitive power) to go from 2d or 3d amateur -- the strongest programs -- to become a high-dan professional. Further perspective: Various professionals have remarked that they believe the best humans are only about 3 handicap stones weaker than God.

Consider this. Perhaps you play chess; David Levy's famous chess AI bet was that no computer by 1978 could beat him, a chess international master, in a match (I don't know his exact strength, but presumably 2400-2500 Elo -- much, much stronger than an expert!) Now, in 1978 the best computer could not beat him in a match. But it did win a game, and draw a game. However, it took nearly another 20 years from there before a computer could beat the world champion.

But Go computers, relatively speaking are not even as good at Go as the 1978 computer was at chess. The equivalent of a 2d amateur at Go might be a 2100 Elo human at chess, a strong expert; certainly not an IM! So it's not obvious to me that Go computers will be at a world-class level in a shorter timeframe than 20 years. Indeed, I believe more effort has gone into computer Go circa 2010 than had gone into computer chess circa 1978, so it might be reasonable to expect progress to continue even slower.

<comment><USER8> _So it's not obvious to me that Go computers will be at a world-class level in a shorter timeframe than 20 years._

Don't get me wrong: I agree with you 100% on this. I'd more likely go further and wager _against_ that happening. Go has an absolutely silly branching factor, no solid method of pruning, and no straightforward position evaluation function. Material doesn't work nearly as well as it does in Chess, and the sheer amount of information contained in the board makes the "mean value of this board position in past grandmaster games" approach completely infeasible.

My only point is that researchers are, indeed, making progress. It's just very limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> +1 for funding issues.

When I was working on my undergraduate thesis on applying machine learning techniques to board games, I developed the basis of a new method of analyzing board games (using graphs of games and graph isomorphism) but I wasn't able to find anyone who could finance me doing a research masters in it. Although I think part of my issue was that it wasn't obviously Computer Science, nor was it obviously Mathematics.

<comment><USER12> The old saw still rings true: turn your research problem into a military application and the DoD will likely fund it. Perhaps instead modeling a chess board as a graph you model passable routes in a mountainous terrain. Instead of chess pieces, maybe the forces you're modeling are small groups with different movement characteristics?

<comment><USER13> Which chess piece is the guys with guns, and which chess piece is the airstrike?

<comment><USER12> "In this paper we assume all forces are ground-based and beyond any hope of air-support or resupply. Historical analysis of battle-field circumstance will reveal numerous instances--even in the modern period--of such occurrences. A more general result is beyond the scope or intention of this paper."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is another closely related field that has plenty of real applications: formal verification. Essentially the task is to ensure no reachable state violates some property. The problem is the same as in chess, the reachable state space is enormous. There is probably more funding available for this take on the problem than chess, but it has been studied for decades and there are no easy answers.

<comment><USER15> Out of curiosity, I wonder how long it'll be before we can simply compute every possible valid game, inserting every valid move into some type of tree structure, and have a computer simply walk the tree structure always aiming for a "win" leaf.

Anybody have any ideas on how big the data for that would be? (I suspect there could be some optimizations as some games that start differently could end up in the same state as some other games -- i.e. optimize for board state collisions).

<comment><USER16> It's possible we never will. Although we take Moore's law for granted, eventually we'll hit the natural limits of computation and storage per m^3, and solving chess completely may well be beyond that (but maybe not, as well).

From Wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number>):

"Allis also estimated the game-tree complexity to be at least 10^123, "based on an average branching factor of 35 and an average game length of 80". As a comparison, the number of atoms in the observable universe, to which it is often compared, is estimated to be between 4×10^79 and 10^81."

<comment><USER15> I'm wondering if that number is for every possible game valid or invalid, or just valid games.

In case anybody is interested

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > What if we make things easier for the machine? It is obvious to a rank > beginner that a perfect game with a rook handicap is a win for the side with > the material advantage. No, make it a queen! Surely that must be a provable > win?

Hm, I'm sure it must be. Although I don't know how you go about proving it, it's a simple matter to force equal trades; black cannot avoid the exchange of pieces forever, and if white plays a perfect game he will always win, without doubt.

> Not so fast. Even against a crushing asymmetry in material, it is not too > hard to avoid mate for a couple of dozen moves, which means that calculating > all the way to the end of the game is beyond the reach of search-based > algorithms.

Okay, just calculate the moves it would take to force the equal exchange of material from a given position. Generally as the game progresses and the board opens up it becomes inescapable.

After a certain point, when enough material has been removed from the board, looking for mate becomes trivial. Esp if you operate with such a commanding advantage as a queen...assuming you can force the equal exchange of all other material, it is possible to calculate checkmate within a couple of moves.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry, but that is simply incorrect.

 _it's a simple matter to force equal trades; black cannot avoid the exchange of pieces forever, and if white plays a perfect game he will always win, without doubt._

Yes, that's pretty much the human intuition for why no one doubts that White will win. But it is very, very far from a mathematical proof.

 _Okay, just calculate the moves it would take to force the equal exchange of material from a given position._

Let me remind you that each _ply_ has a branching factor of about 20, which means each move has a branching factor of several hundred. In most positions you'd be lucky to be able to calculate even one or two forced exchanges, let alone all the way to the end of the game.

A program attempting to prove victory operates in a very different context from a normal chess playing program — it is not allowed to prune any positions at all. We haven't even found the status of all seven piece endings yet! That is despite intense effort. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_tablebase>

It is utterly, utterly inconceivable that a search-based approach will ever prove victory with Queen odds.

<comment><USER17> > Yes, that's pretty much the human intuition for why no one doubts that White > will win. But it is very, very far from a mathematical proof.

White will win if he plays perfectly: this is mathematically assured because white has an advantage of nine points. The only way for white to lose or to draw is by extreme error. The article assumes a perfect game, so I too assume that white will play a perfect game.

> Let me remind you that each ply has a branching factor of about 20, which > means each move has a branching factor of several hundred. In most positions > you'd be lucky to be able to calculate even one or two forced exchanges, let > alone all the way to the end of the game.

As I recall, Deep Blue was calculating at a depth of more than eight moves...

> The Deep Blue chess computer which defeated Kasparov in 1997 would typically > search to a depth of between six and eight moves to a maximum of twenty or > even more moves in some situations. -- > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)>

I find it difficult to believe that this wouldn't have improved or could not be improved upon, since this was based on the technology available in 1997. It's safe to say we've made progress since then.

While you may not be able to calculate an entire game, you could certainly calculate all the exchanges required to reach a properly winnable and calculable endgame. This is pretty damn close to being able to calculate a whole game...and you're assured victory.

As I said, once you get to a point of two kings and a queen, it's trivial.

<comment><USER18> I think one important point you're missing is that a chess engine looking to mathematically prove a victory is very different from the ones that play against grand masters. Deep Blue may have been able to calculate 6 to 8 moves in advance, but that was after it pruned all the moves that were obviously incorrect. When you're trying to prove something mathematically however, you have to assume that even something as silly as sacrificing a queen for a pawn with no obvious positional gains is a valid move and calculate all possible branches taken from that move until checkmate some 30 moves down the road.

For example, checkers is a vastly simpler game than chess. Yet, it took 18 years of constant computation to solve it [1]. Even a game as simple as tic- tac-toe has 255,168 possible games [2]. The estimated number of chess games is 10^10^50 [3].

1\. [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12296-checkers- solved-...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12296-checkers-solved-after- years-of-number-crunching.html)

2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe>

3\. <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Chess.html></comment></comment></comment></comment>